It has been a long time coming, but after 1,891 days in captivity, Nick Rowe became one of only 37 prisoners to successfully escape from Vietcong prisons and make it back to friendly forces. This is the culminating event of his five years to freedom. The helicopter that picked him up radioed ahead and a large crowd gathered to welcome him home. After escaping, Rowe found out that he had been promoted twice in captivity and was now a major.
Less than a week after gaining his freedom, Major Rowe was back in the United States and reunited with his parents. He remained in the Army in 1972 when he retired but was called back to active duty as a lieutenant colonel in 1981 to help build a course for the Army to train personnel who had a higher-an-average change of finding themselves isolated or captured due to their specific jobs, like special forces or pilots. He helped create the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape course or SERE to help other potential prisoners return with honor like he did.
Following his promotion to colonel, Rowe was made chief of the Joint US Military Advisory Group in the Philippines where he partnered with the CIA and Filipino intelligence agencies to bring down communist insurgencies in that country. In April 1989, he was assassinated by one such group on his way to work.
Colonel James Nicholas "Nick" Rowe is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Section 48, Grave 2165-A but his legacy lives on today across the US Army, but no place more than Camp MacKall, North Carolina where SERE is taught and the school's obstacle course - arguably the toughest in the world - is named the Nasty Nick in his memory.
